This has proved to be a greatly enjoyable introduction to a
wide range of music for cello and piano by contemporary Australian
composers. The one exception to that contemporary epithet is
the inclusion of Percy Grainger’s 1902 Scandinavian
Suite. Much as I enjoy Grainger, and given the work’s
relative rarity it is a pleasure to hear but under the overall
umbrella of ‘modern’ - albeit accessible - music
it sits a fraction out of place.

All of the music here shows the composers to be individual,
interesting and able to write music both attractive and of substance.
For want of a better collective term - putting the Grainger
to one side for the moment - this should be termed post-modernist
in that for any contemporary compositional devices used these
pieces are essentially tonal and direct in their emotional appeal.
Interestingly the earliest work - Don Banks’ Three
Studies is also the most self-consciously ‘modern’
indeed serial in its approach. Elena Kats-Chernin’s Blue
Silence opens the disc, gives it its title and in many ways
defines what is to come both musically, in performance terms
and technically. All the works benefit from an English-only
liner which includes a composer biography and photograph and
a brief description of the work from the composer where possible.
So we learn Kats-Chernin wrote her work for her son and other
schizophrenia sufferers. She explains that such people yearn
for silence and a state of meditative calm and that blue is
a colour often associated with healing. This is a touchingly
simple but not simplistic work - there are two basic musical
building blocks; a rocking melodic figuration and a four chord
sequence. In essence the work gently states, combines and recombines
these elements over its eight minute course. The emotional landscape
remains essentially gentle as suits its meditative mood. The
work opens with the piano alone stating all of the musical material.
Here and throughout the disc pianist Timothy Young proves to
be an exceptionally fine player with a wide range of tone and
keyboard colour whether chiming Kats-Chernin’s bell-like
chords or Grainger’s furious fistfuls of notes. The entry
of David Pereira’s wistful cello does raise an immediate
query that persists throughout - Young’s piano sounds
like the dominant partner both musically and as technically
balanced by the production team. Given the nature of the opening
work that is not an issue but elsewhere and certainly in the
Grainger suite Pereira’s cello is subsumed in the storm
of the piano writing.

David Pereira is a fine player and a champion of Australian
string music. It is a pleasure to hear a player willing to produce
a genuinely quiet sound but my only concern it that here the
dynamic is too often allied to a thinning of the tone as well.
This works well in the afore-mentioned Blue Silence and
indeed later in the hypnotic Night Spell but seems less
appropriate in the hale and hearty Grainger. The uncredited
note writer mentions the difficulty of the work as one reason
for its neglect. Certainly there are passages of cruelly demanding
double-stopping, in the third movement Norwegian Polka
especially that taxes Pereira. This is the only work on the
CD for which I have comparable versions; from cellists Joel
Moerschel on Northeastern records and Stephen Orton as part
of Vol.13 of the Chandos Grainger Edition. It has to be said
that both of those other cellists make a better fist of the
Grainger than Pereira although I do prefer Young’s piano
contribution which captures the forthright and muscular open-ness
of Grainger’s writing to perfection. Don Banks’
Three Studies were his first completely 12-tone compositions
written after an extended period of study with Luigi Dallapiccola,
Milton Babbitt and Matyas Seiber. After the open-air directness
of the Grainger these make for a striking contrast - it was
a good programming choice to juxtapose them directly. For all
the rigour and care in construction I find it hard to respond
to music so clearly of the head rather than heart but they receive
a palpably committed performance. Alicia Grant’s Night
Spell and Ian Munro’s Lucy Sleeps in some way
come together to form an - unrelated - triptych of miniatures
together with the title work which inhabit a similar emotional
landscape of hypnotic meditation and repose. Likewise skill
in the programming links the Banks to Ian Farr’s Sonata.
This is the other earlier/contemporary work dating from 1969
and again follows the aesthetic of contemporary music of the
time which seems to equate this style of composition with seriousness
of intent. A by-product of listening to this disc has been the
crystallising of the idea that recent contemporary composers
- regardless of their compositional techniques employed - seem
more at ease with embracing overtly emotional external subjects.

Certainly that is the case with all the music presented here
where the extra-musical stimuli evoke strongly felt emotions
even when expressed in a ‘contained’ manner. Composer
Martin Wesley-Smith clearly feels the plight of the oppressed
peoples of West Papua and expresses his solidarity in Morning
Star Lament. He describes the work as; “.. a lament
for those who have died resisting the occupation, for those
who are prisoners in their own country, for the destruction
of their environment, for the brutality of the occupiers, for
the hypocrisy of the West…”. Strong stuff. As is
my wont, I listened to this disc the first time with no reference
to the liner. With music I do not know it ensures no preconceptions
or expectations. In the case of this Lament it also provided
considerable confusion. In purely musical terms there is an
extraordinarily wide range of styles and moods encompassed in
the nine minutes of the work. This includes ‘serious’
contemporary clusters, brilliant be-bop like syncopating passages,
a curiously impressive vocalise where one of the players, uncredited,
accompanies themselves (the other?) singing a plaintive wordless
melody. At first listen, it was the presence of a simple, almost
saccharine melody richly harmonised in the best traditions of
the tea-shop that frames the work that confused me. It turns
out this melody, “O My Country Papua” was written
in the 1930s and became the colony’s official anthem and
at much the same time the Morning Star flag became its official
flag. When Indonesia took over the country in 1963 both were
banned. Certainly, knowing that cranks up the emotional temperature
of the work several notches and ‘explains’ much
of the music’s thrust in an instant. It does leave the
listener with the eternal debate; should music need its context
to be explained before you can evenly partially understand it.
As it happens this was one of my favourite pieces on the disc
even before I read the explanation - I enjoyed the diversity
of styles it embraces and again it benefits from a very powerful
performance. What one cannot divine from the superficial knowledge
of a work afforded by this kind of review is whether/how the
musical material of the anthem is transformed or developed in
the main body of the work.

Perhaps worth mentioning here that five of the eight works presented
here are getting their world premiere recordings. The disc closes
with another of those five; Matthew Hindson’s Jungle
Fever. I must admit that the presence of this work was my
main reason for requesting it to review. I find Hindson to be
one of the most interesting and convincing composers wrestling
with the challenge of making true contemporary music relevant
for an audience brought up listening to non-classical music.
He does these by embracing elements of popular music; fantastic
propulsive rhythms, memorable melodies and riffs but without
‘selling out’ by writing classical-pop or vapid
pastiche. It’s a delicate balance but one he manages to
achieve. This piece contains all of Hindson’s most typical
and best gestures - big theatrical moments, nagging rock-derived
ostinati and melodic cells of ear-worm memorability. Its another
piece that might benefit from a richer, fuller cello tone but
the athleticism and conviction of the playing is never in doubt.

Overall, this disc is an excellent sampler of the rich diversity
and range of contemporary cello music being written by Australian
composers. All credit to performers Pereira and Young for devoting
the considerable amount of time and energy it must have taken
to bring this amount of unfamiliar yet impressive music to the
studio. A worthwhile project skilfully executed.

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